What is iphone 4?
iPhone 4 is the fourth version of apples popular iphone handset, the successor of the iPhone 3GS that was announced around 1 year ago. It looks significantly different to its predecessor. Whilst the 3gs was made of plastic and glass, the new iPhone 4 is made of glass and stainless steel, leading to improved reception for mobile phone signal, WIFI signal, bluetooth and GPS.
The new iphone is also much thinner than its predecessor with a thickness of only 9.3mm, making it the thinnest smartphone available in the world today. The weight of the iPhone 4 is approximately the same as the old iPhone 3gs and iPhone 3g, but the build quality is much improved.
The iPhone 4 is available in 2 colours, black and white, however this time the "white" iPhone is completely white, as opposed to the previous "white" iPhone 3g and iPhone 3gs which both had white backs, but still had the same black front as the "black" models.
The iPhone 4 is available in 16gb and 32gb configurations, similar to the iPhone 3gs.
Some pictures of the new iPhone 4 can be seen below.
both images taken from apple.com, copyright apple.
The new features of iPhone 4
iPhone 4 is a big improvement over its predecessor, and adds many new features and improvements. It is important to know that a software update released by apple (iOS4) that will be released on June 21st will add many new features to the iPhone 3gs and 3g as well as some newer iPod touch models. Therefore in this section I will concentrate exclusively on features unique to iPhone 4 that cannot be added to older models with a software update.
Camera
I will begin with the camera, as many people still choose a phone based partially upon what kind of camera the phone has, and may use their mobile phone as their dedicated camera.
The original iPhone was famed for having a poor camera in relation to its high retail price. With the introduction of the 3gs, this was partially rectified with the resolution of the camera going up from 2 megapixels in the preceding two models to 3.2 megapixels. More importantly, the iPhone 3gs also introduced an autofocus camera, which is vital for any kind of serious photography.
The iPhone 4 has taken a huge leap forward in the camera department with the introduction of a 5 megapixel camera with a flash. While previous iPhones have been virtually unusable in low light conditions, the addition of a flash should go some way to rectify this, and hopefully make the iPhone a serious replacement for a dedicated low to mid range digital camera. Some example photographs taken with the iPhone 4's camera can be seen in this gallery at engadget.com.
Apple have also added a front facing video camera for video calling. Disappointingly, this only works between iPhone 4 handsets, so it cannot be used to call a user of another mobile phone. Also, in 2010 this will only work over WIFI networks. However, jailbroken iPhone users will be able to use this functionality over 3g, and I will post a tutorial for this some time in the next few weeks, after the iPhone 4 is released.
The iPhone 4 can also record high definition video, in 720p. This is a fantastic new addition and means that this phone can record better video than a large proportion of very high digital cameras that are only a year or two old, and most low to mid range video cameras sold today. iPhone 4 records these videos at 30 frames per second, so you can also expect its video output to be exceptionally smooth.
Screen
The new iPhone 4 has a screen resolution of quadruple all three of the previous iPhones, and apple call this a "retina display" For those not sure as to what this means, I will give a brief explanation.
An electronic display is made up of "pixels". These are very small rectangles that can change colour to produce a picture. The more pixels a display has, the smaller the areas that can be produced on the screen and the more detail can be produced. Therefore the more pixels a screen has, the clearer and more realistic it looks.
Many people believe that this is the greatest improvement over the iPhone 3gs. However, I am slightly wary as to whether this new display will be utilised effectively, as there have already been 50 million devices with a lower resolution display that have been shipped. This will give developers little motivation to code their apps in the new resolution, or conversely, even if they do apples app store will become fragmented, as there will be apps that can run on the iPhone 4, but not on any of the older hardware.
Apple did say that their display will automatically render text in the new resolution, which will make reading text on the iPhone 4 a much more pleasant experience that on the older hardware as it will be clearer and more legible, so this is a definite improvement for those spending a lot of time on safari, or reading text in other applications.
Internals and battery life.
Possibly of less concern to the average user, but very important overall are the iPhone 4's internal components, such as the processor, memory (not to be confused with storage) and graphics processor. As usual, apple released little detail of these components, but once iPhone 4 begins shipping, useful information about these components will be found at this link.
We do know that iPhone 4 contains apple's A4 processor, which should make it faster than the iPhone 3gs.
The battery life is much improved over the iPhone 3gs and the official figures are as follows:
7 hours talk time on 3g
14 hours talk time on 2g (unimportant unless you keep 3g turned off)
standby time 300 hours (unimportant unless you don't even use your phone)
6 hours of 3g internet
10 hours of wifi internet
10 hours of video playback
40 hours of music playback
These represent strong improvements over the old model, yet those expecting battery times similar to the iPad could have been left disappointed.
gyroscope
I am unsure as to how useful this will prove to be and as to how it will be utilised. It is much easier to view this in action than to explain, so I have provided a video link:
As you can probably see, it seems unrealistic to expect people to play games in the manner seen in public. However, since the accelerometer was introduced it has been adopted by most major smart-phones, so it is not unrealistic to expect the gyroscope to have similar success.
pricing and availability
As of yet, no UK pricing has been released for iPhone 4, however the phone will be released for pre order on the 15th June on Vodafone, orange and o2, with expected delivery date of June 24th. When pricing information is available, I will make a post analysing all the different options, and find the cheapest and best value tariffs for this phone.
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